Fly-Aways and Freedom

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I am known by my curly shadow curse. And I regularly reintroduce myself during the once-a-year “normal” day. Folks regularly introduced to the frizz uncontrolled and overwhelmed. And that is fine with me. A defining feature I can embrace since “Oh yes, there’s just no hope for it” and “All-natural, all the time” but don’t worry about the maintenance because it’s an excuse to “get up and go.” No one can tell a difference anyway, just go.

Go unabashed in the wind because it’s tangled however you throw it and luckily the humidity is low today. But the occasional rainstorm transforms me from the beach-babe to the medieval torture chamber victim as soon as the steam starts to rise from the pavement. But it also embraces me and keeps me warm in the winter. No scarf needed. I can wrap the mass around my neck, a self-inflicted, Porphyria during the occasional exuberant breeze. Even she is a vision of beauty and lust, even if in the grave. I can mimic some semblance of that beginning, on a Tuesday, perhaps.

I am the young girl standing in front of the mirror for three hours fumbling the tie that won’t stay on my piano-fingers. My only wish at the time, to tie back this blight and pin it until the wind can never twist open the fly-aways. Perhaps then I might sneak in with the flat-heads. I did learn. But now–now I can go. Go wherever I want and that thing that everyone knows me by reaches out to brush the chest of the man I lay next to. It spreads out like water-alive across his arms and my shoulders-bare (except for the occasional escapee) and I am whole in this genetic gift cursed upon my scalp.